This piss-addled redneck scumbag Cotton really manages to stand out in a room full of them.
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Exactly. And I don’t get the pushback here. Republicans were never NOT going to cast expanding the court as a partisan move. John Roberts himself could propose it, claim it’s necessary for the functioning of the court, and not at all partisan, and Republicans would still attack expanding the court as if it were. It does not matter what the Dems say or do anymore, the GOP is going to viciously and bitterly attack it as if it’s the very worst thing that has ever happened. My God, Mike Lee said the voting rights bill was written by Satan himself. How much more dramatic can it get? And let’s not kid ourselves, it IS a partisan move. My only issue is that if they’re going to do it then they should do it this year or in the lame duck next year.
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The courts have already been packed.
By shameless, desperate, Republican hypocrites who can’t win any other way.
Dem messaging needs to include a narrative to unpack the courts.
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They are tying themselves in knots attacking us and corporations that support voting. Of course they are going to fight us on the SCOTUS. And of course we should ignore them - they ignored the fuck out of us with Kavanaugh and Gorsuch.
Fuck the GOP and their complaining.
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I’ve had enough of your sensible and easy-to-follow advice!
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Maddening, isn’t it?
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WORD! I mean, I’m old enough to remember when Mitch McConnell refused to even speak to an Obama SCOTUS nominee because April was too close to a presidential election. (Wonder whatever happened to the guy he nominated? Oh, yeah, he’s AG now.) I also remember when that same Mitch McConnell confirmed a SCOTUS justice two weeks before an election WHILE Americans were voting in a presidential election.
Yep, Mitch McConnell and the rest of his caucus ignored us at every damn turn. Had Jeb or somebody reasonably near to sane been president instead of Trump, it wouldn’t have cost the GOP a damn thing. Does anybody think the election last year was won or lost on fears of the GOP getting another SCOTUS justice? Also, I’m increasingly of the mind that unless it affects them personally, most Americans aren’t paying a lick of attention. Dems should pass H.R. 1 and include the SCOTUS expansion as well as D.C. statehood. Just roll it all up into one package and let them cry about it.
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O yes please! I would love to see us do that. And we should - there is just no reason why we shouldn’t.
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Someone (Charles Pierce, I think) christened him “The bobble-throated slapdick from Arkansas.”
Sound perfect to me.
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Aw, geez… this will be the next attempt in Wisconsin, if the move in AR is in any way successful. I can see Vos (the House Speaker) giving it a shot.
Except of course that the SC is firmly controlled by Conservatives. Maybe not this session, but after the next election or appointment (after all, the CJ is 80 something) when the court inevitably goes liberal.
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My preferred message is one that addresses the reasons structural change is needed—and it is—and gives us time to make the case. Then, when the partisan issue is raised, you acknowledge that the Republicans have been stacking the court alongside their stacking the Federal judiciary, and make the case that that kind of court-packing is part of why it’s so important to get the structural reform.
Having the number of Justices pegged to the number of Federal circuits doesn’t just address the issues with the Court now, it builds in a degree of future-proofing that allows Congress and the President the flexibility to meet the needs of the nation without relying on partisan politics.
See, if we just pack the Court, they can just do the exact same thing by taking the number of Justices to 21. If we link it to the number of Federal Appeals Court Circuits, then they have to change the number of circuits—massively expanding the judiciary in a way that can’t be easily justified unless we’ve seen a 25%+ increase in population—in order to do it.
To use the schoolyard analogy, we tell the teacher the Republicans have been hitting us, and we’re taking away the roll of pennies they’ve been holding in their fist while they did it.
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So long ago, in fact, it has dinner reservations at The Restaraunt at the End of the Universe.
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Not sure where this partial quotation is from. About expanding the Court Pelosi did say all of it … but also a little bit more:
"It’s not out of the question. It has been done before in the history of our country a long time ago. And the growth of our country, the size of our country, the growth of our challenges in terms of the economy, etc., might necessitate such a thing.”
That’s about the substance.
Whereas part of her political message was that people should understand the Democrats are focused:
No. I support the president’s commission to study such a proposal, but frankly I’m not — right now, we’re back, our members, our committees are working. We’re putting together the infrastructure bill and the rest."
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I agree that doing it the way you’ve described would be fine - but I’m not sure flipping the order of the concepts is a huge messaging snafu. We can just as easily say we’re doing it to redress the partisan imbalance, and when pressed on “why four”, say that it is one justice per circuit.
I also don’t think that Republicans are likely to respect a norm about the number of justices on the Court once we take this step, nor do I think voters would likely punish them much.
My own preference would have been to pass a court expansion and use that certainty to bargain with Republicans for a bipartisan restructuring of the Court in the constitution. Something like five republicans, five democrats, and five that are selected by majority vote of the other ten. Of course, I also want a pony…
I didn’t say anything about the size of the panels, SCOTUS hears a small number of cases and because it might be the final ruling the size of panels should be larger. With a larger court membership, a first-read panel of seven would be my ideal. And of course like the circuits, appeals en-banc should be allowed for some types of cases. And constitutional questions could require a larger initial panel or even an en-banc hearing from the start.
And then the norm that it should always be odd number of jurists could also be tossed. For instance, a requirement that a panel have an even number and reach a majority to overturn a lower court might encourage justices to sharpen their arguments in order to win over a deciding vote. That could have a salutary effect on how cases get decided.
nohat42’s last statement is also a solid rule to put in place.
Article III courts are, after all, the children of the other branches so the other branches should use the Constitutional 3,2,2 powers to make laws that reform the federal courts in line with national evolutions, instead of being so hands-off.
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The cows have come home to milk themselves.
13? Fuck 13! Fight for 21!
It is because it frames the partisan reasoning foremost in the public’s mind. First impressions matter. As for whether Republicans would respect a norm… it wouldn’t be a norm, it’d be law. So rather than just specifying a number in the new law, they’d need to answer questions about decoupling it from the Appeals Courts.
As for a Constitutional restructuring… you won’t get it, because the Congress aren’t the only ones in play then. No deal around that can get made without including State legislatures, and you won’t get them to agree on anything in a single Congressional term.
No, you didn’t, but unless you’re vastly expanding the Court, that’s about the size you’re looking at. The big advantage of panels is that you don’t need the majority of the Justices to sit on one. At 13 Justices, that means a 5-Justice panel, because a panel of 7 means you’ve jettisoned that advantage, and the majority of the Court is already involved. If the decision then goes to an en banc appeal, most of the Justices have already rendered a decision, which makes things… awkward.
And when that initial reason happens to be disingenuous in the extreme, it makes the public stop trusting whatever you say next.
Yes, I know that the reason is based in fact. But it isn’t the real reason, and it is OBVIOUS that it is not the real reason. Leading with it just means that the first impression is that you are trying to hide the ball.
It would be law that there IS one justice for each circuit. It would be a norm that there SHOULD be one justice for each circuit. Republicans can easily change the law with a simple vote. You are arguing that they would be dissuaded from doing so because “they’d need to answer questions”. That’s obviously not true in a technical sense - if they have the votes, they can do it.
But you are really arguing that the need to answer questions about why they are doing what they are doing would dissuade them from doing it. In other words, that the normative force of our argument (and the absence of justification for theirs) would dissuade them. I am pretty sure you are mistaken about that.
As for my grand constitutional restructuring… well, asking for a pony was supposed to be a tacit admission that it was never going to happen. But the sad fact is that a constitutional amendment is the only way we can be (reasonably) sure Republicans don’t just undo whatever solution we come up with.
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